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Poucas pessoas trabalham aqui.

Poucas pessoas trabalham aqui.
Few people work here.
From Lesson 52:Quantifiers (muito, pouco)·Portuguese (Portugal)

Breakdown of Poucas pessoas trabalham aqui.

aqui
here
trabalhar
to work
pouco
little
a pessoa
the person

Questions & Answers about Poucas pessoas trabalham aqui.

Why is it Poucas instead of Pouco?
Pouco means "little" or "few", but it changes to match the noun it describes. Since pessoas is a feminine plural noun, pouco becomes the feminine plural poucas.
Does pessoas only refer to women?
No, pessoas means "people" in general. The word itself is always grammatically feminine, even if the group of people includes men. Because the word is feminine, we must always use feminine adjectives and quantifiers with it, like Poucas.
Why does the verb trabalham end in -am?
The subject of the sentence is Poucas pessoas (Few people), which acts like the pronoun "they". For regular -ar verbs like trabalhar (to work), the "they" form is made by replacing the -ar ending with -am.
How do I pronounce the -am at the end of trabalham?
It sounds very different from English! A word-final -am in Portuguese is a nasal vowel sound, very similar to the Portuguese -ão. It sounds a bit like the "ow" in "cow" spoken through your nose, not like the English word "am".

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